Hog-wild Linebacker

Some Think He's Nuts, But Tackling Pigs Is A Hobby For Uf's Channing Crowder.

October 17, 2003|Jeff Darlington Gainesville Bureau

GAINESVILLE — The mud beneath his soiled sneakers reeks of manure, but he doesn't seem to mind. The growing stench actually fuels his growing grin.

Florida linebacker Channing Crowder paces down a stretch of dirt road. To his right, patches of overgrown grass hide the tires of a baby-blue, broken-down Cutlass Supreme. To his left, a wire fence wraps around a plot of loose sand scattered with hoof prints.

"There goes one," said Crowder, moving faster.

His eyes widen, his back straightens. A hog, about 200 pounds, waddles from behind the fence and across the path.

There's a snort -- from Crowder and from the hog. But before Crowder can get close enough, the prey scurries into a group of trees in the direction of a trailer home.

"He doesn't want none of me," Crowder said. "That's all right. There's plenty more where he came from."

Smart hog. Unfortunately for some other hogs, Crowder -- a 6-foot-2, 236-pound freshman from Atlanta -- is on the scene.

Crowder is a wild man on the football field. Call him crazy, and he'll thank you. He is known for his quick feet and his hard hits and is especially good against the run. He'll need to be Saturday when he and the Gators face another group of hogs -- the 11th-ranked Arkansas Razorbacks, a team that relies on a punishing ground attack.

Crowder off the field? Forget about it. One day this summer, while he was at football practice, Alachua County Animal Control confiscated a 9-foot, 50-pound Burmese Python from his dorm room.

On this Sunday, Crowder is spending his afternoon on a plot of land near the outskirts of Gainesville, hunting hogs. In the distance, an old woman wearing a blue denim dress raises a rifle and fires three shots from her front porch in the direction of a hog.

Not Crowder. He doesn't use guns. Instead, he chases the animals down and tackles them -- for fun.

"Yup," he confessed. "It's a crazy man's sport."

Florida's roster is stacked with players willing to play the "sport." Crowder, who was introduced to hog hunting by teammate Brian Crum about 18 months ago, is among about 10 Gators who have experienced the practice of pig pouncing.

"Between Brian and I, we've gotten quite a few guys into the woods," Crowder said. "But not everyone has taken to it quite like we have."

Then again, not everyone has been kicked off their high school basketball team two games into their career for chasing the referee around the court. The reason? "He called a technical foul because I dunked," Crowder explains.

That brings him here, to this hog pen.

After scouting the area, he finally finds the hog of choice. Crowder steps over the fenced-in area and into the corner, where the hog eats. He rattles a bucket to startle his pick.

The hog bolts toward Crowder, its two-inch tusks curling into its nose. Crowder jumps to the side, turns around and dives toward its back legs. He pinches the hooves together, heaves the 150-pound boar into the air and drops it on its back.

For his finishing move, Crowder stretches an orange Gators T-shirt over the hog's head to tag his catch.

"It's just for the rush, really," he said as he pulled the T-shirt off the hog's back a few seconds later. This time, that's where the capture ends. But over the summer, Crowder and Crum grew too attached to one of their catches. They decided to tote a piglet back to campus.

"We thought it'd be like having a puppy," Crum said.

Alas, what they didn't count on was the horrific stench that flooded through their door room. After two weeks, even Crowder couldn't take it anymore.

He called up quarterback Ingle Martin's house, where teammates Todd McCullough and Lance Butler also live, and told them he would be dropping off a surprise.

"For a couple of days, they actually liked it," Crowder said. "They just sat around feeding it Cheerios all day."

But two days later, they had enough, demanding Crum return the piglet to southern Georgia, where Crum's family lives. So Crowder and Crum made the 115-mile drive to rural Camden County.

In Crum's hometown of Woodbine, though, Crowder's football talent is overshadowed by another feat: He holds the Camden County record for the fastest apprehension ever recorded.

During a competition -- yes, they actually hold hog-hunting contests where Crum lives -- Crowder and another buddy took just 17 seconds to snag a penned-up hog and stretch a shirt over its body.

"Right before we got into the pen to go against the same hog, another guy was trying to show off, trying to tease the thing," Crowder said. "The hog ran after him, so he jumped up to go over it. When the guy came down, the hog hooked its tusks into his arm. Blood started pouring out from the dude's wrist all the way to his forearm."

Minutes later, Crowder jumped into the pen and got the best of the hog.

Crowder shrugs off the accomplishment. As he explains, the hogs in competitions are confined to their pens. It's a different story in the open woods -- especially when hunting at night.